Page 47 of Contractually Wed

She ran her hand over the dark wood of the banister, a bright glow of conviction in her heart.

This was her home, her family and her life with the man she adored with every breath. She wasn’t abandoning it just when she’d realized how precious it was.

A day after Rina’s wedding, Jia returned to their family home to collect a few things from her bedroom. Except for some books, keepsakes, and one large photo of her with her mom and Rina that she’d blown up and framed, she added the rest to a trash pile.

It was both fortifying and sad that she didn’t need or want anything more from this home she’d lived in all her life. Everything that mattered, everything that she needed, Apollo had already given to her, a hundred times over.

She taped up the small cardboard box and brought it down to find her father, Vik and Rina waiting. For her.

For just a second, Jia wished for Apollo’s presence so much that it was a physical ache in her belly. But no matter, she reminded herself, because he was there in her heart.

Rina strode to her side, hugged Jia and announced in that timid whisper of hers that she had a new job as a receptionist at a dental office. Jia had never been happier for her sister. Clearly, Michael was a great influence.

Vik, on the other hand, had a beard, dark shadows under his eyes and looked like he’d had a rough last few months. “I shouldn’t have a laid a finger on either of you. Drunk or not,” he said stiffly.

Jia nodded.

Her father, hands tucked into his coat pocket, looked as smart and stylish as he always did. But there was a beaten-down look in his eyes that made Jia wonder what new plague Apollo had unleashed on him. For so long, she’d done everything in her life to please this man. She’d yearned for one word of affection, for one hug, for one kind glance even.

“Is he treating you well, Jia?” he asked her, as if reading from a script he’d been asked to learn by rote. And suddenly, she wondered if this stilted, awkward reunion was all Apollo’s doing.

Jia laughed, through the tears pooling in her eyes. “He’s...good to me.”

“About your stock,” her father began.

“I don’t want it,” she said, shrugging. “I’ll sell it to you for a dollar. Just tell me where to sign.”

“I was about to tell you that it doesn’t matter what you do with it.Healready has controlling stock. He’s had it for weeks now.”

“What? How?”

Rina bit her lip, carefully avoiding their brother’s and father’s gazes. “I sold mine to him. Paul and I had nowhere to go and Dad had fired him. So I called Apollo and asked him if he wanted to buy it.”

“My own daughter, selling out behind my back,” Father said, with a flatness to his tone. It almost felt like...acceptance. Even regret maybe. “Not that I have ever done anything to earn any loyalty from either of you.”

“What?” Jia asked, her mind reeling. “And he agreed?”

“Yes,” Rina said, smiling. “He paid way over the market price. When I tried to protest, given he’s your husband and I might need his help again, y’know,” Rina said, winking in a very un-Rina way, “he said he needed this to be over. And then he turned around, appointed Dad the CEO again with some conditions, got Vik out of jail and—”

“When?”

“In the last couple of weeks. But he’s not the controlling stock owner. You are,” her father said, something almost like a smile twitching at his lips.

Jia had to reach for the pillar to steady herself. “What?”

“He said the only reason he wasn’t also sending me to prison, for stealing from his father, for treating you with such...neglect was you. And the condition that he imposed was that I—”

“You treat me like a daughter you care about. As if I’m not the walking, talking symbol of your wife’s infidelity,” Jia said, giving voice to the words she’d wanted to for so long.

His father blanched. “I was wrong, Jia. On so many levels. And I’m here willingly to make any amends I can. I planned to fly out and see you even before Apollo began another level of upheaval in the company.” Her father stared at his hands, and his mouth pursed. “I didn’t realize what I had in you until I had nothing else.”

Jia wanted to believe him. While he had never loved her as he should, he had never lied to her, or said a cross word to her either. And she did see the glimmer of truth in his eyes now. But, suddenly, his affection, his amends didn’t matter much. Maybe she was just as good as Apollo at keeping grudges but right now, she had no bandwidth left to heal this particular relationship.

She simply nodded in his direction, bid her brother goodbye and left her childhood home with her happy sister by her side and a box full of memories.

Her heart was so full to bursting that she thought it might explode out of her chest. He had written the company he’d worked so hard to own into her name, he’d looked after them despite everything, had even forgiven the man he’d hated for years.

If there was a teeny pinch of doubt about his love for her, Jia had none now.

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